Melio built its reputation on being free. Pay your suppliers by bank transfer, pay nothing, and only get charged if you wanted to use a credit card. That is still how most articles describe it, and it has not been true for a while.
Melio now runs four paid subscription tiers above a limited free plan, meters your bank transfers, and belongs to Xero, which completed its acquisition on 15 October 2025. If you are here because you read that Melio has no subscription fee, this page is the correction.
Is Melio still free?
Partly. There is a free tier called Go, but it is capped: one user and five free ACH payments a month. Beyond that allowance every bank transfer costs $0.50. Accounting sync on the free plan stops after your first ten payments.
For a sole trader paying a handful of bills, Go genuinely is free and remains one of the cheapest ways into AP automation. For anyone with a second person approving payments, it is not.
Melio pricing
Five plans, as published on Melio’s pricing page and checked on 22 July 2026. Annual billing is the lower figure.
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually | Extra users | Free ACH per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Go | $0 | – | Single user only | 5 |
| Core | $25 | $20/mo | +$10/mo each | 20 |
| Boost | $55 | $44/mo | +$10/mo each | 50 |
| Unlimited | $80 | $64/mo | Included | Unlimited |
| Platinum | Custom pricing, invite only. Requires more than $300K a month in card payments. Adds custom transaction rates, card-to-wire and API access. | |||
There is a 30-day trial of the paid features. If you do not subscribe at the end of it you drop back to Go, and Melio deletes the data tied to premium features, so export anything you care about first.
Transaction fees
The subscription is only half the cost. These are the per-payment charges, from Melio’s own fee documentation:
| Payment method | Fee | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| ACH bank transfer | Free within plan allowance, then $0.50 | About 3 business days |
| Credit or debit card | 2.9% | Depends on delivery method |
| Same-day bank transfer | 1%, capped at $75 | Same day |
| Same-day domestic wire | 1%, capped at $75 | Same day |
| Instant payment | 1%, capped at $75 | Minutes |
| Fast check | $20 flat | Up to 3 business days |
| Overnight check | $50 flat | Next day if ordered before 2pm ET |
| International, USD | $20 flat | 4 to 6 business days |
| International, local currency | Quoted FX rate, locked for 30 minutes | 0 to 3 days |
Card-funded international payments are allowed and add the 2.9% on top. You keep your own card’s rewards, which is the real argument for paying a 2.9% fee deliberately: if your card earns more than that on the spend, the maths works.
One figure to distrust: several comparison sites state that Melio gives you two free mailed cheques a month and then charges $1.50. That number does not appear anywhere in Melio’s own fee list, plan table or help centre. Melio publishes fees only for expedited cheques. Treat it as unverified.
A second trap: Melio’s own help centre still hosts an article saying “Melio doesn’t charge you any subscription fees.” It was last updated three years ago. The pricing page is the authoritative source, not the help centre.
Xero owns Melio now
Xero announced the acquisition on 25 June 2025 and completed it on 15 October 2025. The consideration was US$2.5 billion upfront, with up to a further US$0.5 billion in contingent and deferred payments to Melio employees over three years, mostly tied to outperformance targets. That is why you will see the deal reported variously as $2.5bn, $3bn and A$3.9bn: they are different components and different currencies of the same transaction.
What it means practically:
- Melio still operates as a standalone product. Its own site, app, pricing and non-Xero integrations continue, and Melio states this explicitly and repeatedly. You do not need to use Xero to use Melio.
- Melio also powers bill payments inside Xero. In March 2026 Xero launched embedded online bill payments in its US product, powered by Melio, making it the first major US small-business accounting platform to allow paying bills by credit card on-platform.
- Melio co-founder Matan Bar is now chief executive of Xero US, running both businesses.
The funding history is worth knowing because it explains the pricing change. Melio raised $250 million in September 2021 at a $4 billion valuation, then raised $150 million in October 2024 led by Fiserv at roughly $2 billion, a 50% down round, while saying revenue had grown around tenfold since the earlier round. A free product that had to start earning is the straightforward reading of what followed.
Melio no longer powers QuickBooks Bill Pay
This catches people out constantly. “Bill Pay powered by Melio” inside QuickBooks Online was discontinued on 20 May 2024, with scheduled payments running through to 18 June 2024. Intuit replaced it with its own native QuickBooks Bill Pay in Basic, Premium and Elite tiers.
Melio still offers a direct two-way sync app for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. But Intuit is now a competitor rather than a distribution channel, and any article describing Melio as “the engine behind QuickBooks Bill Pay” is more than two years out of date.
Integrations
- QuickBooks Online on every plan, though Go caps the sync at your first ten payments
- Xero on the same terms
- QuickBooks Desktop on Boost and Unlimited only
- NetSuite on Unlimited only
- Amazon Business and Meta Ads invoice import, plus Gmail bill import
Two corrections this article previously got wrong, both worth stating plainly because they are repeated widely. Melio does not integrate with FreshBooks, and it does not integrate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Neither appears anywhere on Melio’s site or in its help centre. If either is a requirement, Melio is not your tool.
You may also find third-party pages claiming Melio has no NetSuite integration. That is stale. Melio’s own pricing table and a dedicated NetSuite integration page both list it on the Unlimited plan.
What you get
The feature set has grown a long way past the simple bill-payer Melio launched as.
- Paying: ACH, card, domestic wire, paper cheque, instant and same-day transfers, and pay-over-time including Net 30 and instalments of up to twelve months
- Getting paid: branded invoices, payment links, and accepting card or bank payments
- Controls: approval workflows by amount, vendor or scheduler, including gradual and multi-step approvals, across six user roles
- Admin: AI bill capture, a dedicated bills inbox, batch payments, multi-entity support, W-9 collection and 1099 automation
- Agent Mel, an AI assistant launched in January 2026, and an agentic supplier-payment network launched in June 2026 in which AI agents pay suppliers through their own AR systems without the supplier onboarding to Melio
Note that batch scheduling requires Core or above, and combining several bills into a single payment is also a paid-plan feature.
For accounting firms
This is the strongest part of Melio’s offer and the part most reviews skip. The Boost plan is free for the firm itself, with unlimited firm users. Clients get 45 days free and then 30% off any plan. One dashboard covers every client, with six permission levels and a team-management tool, plus an Accounting Partner Program and a training programme. There is a separate wealth-management track aimed at trusts and family offices.
The catch: the free Go plan is not available to firm-managed clients, so every client you bring on is a paying client.
Strengths
- Still the cheapest credible entry point in AP automation, and a real free tier for very small volumes
- Pay by card even where the vendor does not accept cards, which is a genuine cash-flow tool rather than a gimmick
- Unusually good accountant offering, free at the firm level
- Vendors never see your bank details, since Melio makes the payment
- Serious scale behind it now: Melio reports over $30 billion in annual payment volume, and Xero’s ownership removes any question about its funding
Limitations, including the one that matters most
Melio rates 3.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot, which is noticeably below the ratings it carries on software directories. The gap is informative, and the complaint pattern is consistent enough to describe precisely.
The recurring issue is not that the product fails. It is compliance-driven payment holds. Payments get pulled into manual review, the cancel option disappears while a payment is under review, funds sit, and in some cases accounts are suspended with little explanation and no phone route to the team that made the decision. Reviewers in July 2026 describe a first payroll run being debited and the account suspended the next day, and expedited-payment fees not being refunded when the payment was held. Melio’s own public reply to one of these notes that suspensions “typically happen when an account doesn’t align with our Terms of Service.”
This is inherent to the model. Melio is a licensed money transmitter, and money transmitters are obliged to review and freeze transactions. Most payments clear normally on a platform moving over $30 billion a year. But if a held payment would be an emergency for you, that risk belongs in your decision.
Other limitations worth weighing:
- Melio is not a payroll product. Older versions of this article suggested it made payroll easy. It does not do payroll, and attempting to use it that way is one of the documented triggers for account review. Melio’s payroll story is the Gusto partnership, where Gusto runs payroll and Melio runs bill pay.
- Phone support starts at Boost. Go and Core are chat and email only.
- Bank connection and verification friction is a persistent theme in 2026 reviews.
- Thin ERP coverage. NetSuite only on the top plan, and nothing for Dynamics, Sage or Acumatica. This is small-business software.
Melio alternatives
BILL, formerly Bill.com, is the direct incumbent comparison. Ramp Bill Pay and Brex bundle AP free alongside corporate cards and are the reason Melio’s old free model became unsustainable. QuickBooks Bill Pay is now a competitor in its own right if you are already in Intuit’s ecosystem.
Moving upmarket: Tipalti for cross-border payables and tax compliance, Stampli for AP collaboration with broad ERP coverage, and AvidXchange for mid-market verticals such as property management and construction. Plooto, Routable and Relay are reasonable mid-tier options, and Plooto is the usual Canadian answer.
Weaker comparisons that circulate anyway: ReliaBills is invoicing only, Invoiced is accounts receivable, SAP Concur is travel and expense with only Concur Invoice genuinely comparable, and Lightyear is UK and Ireland focused.
Frequently asked questions
Does Melio charge a fee?
Yes, in two ways. A monthly subscription on every plan above the free Go tier ($25, $55 or $80 a month), and per-transaction fees: 2.9% on cards, 1% capped at $75 for instant, same-day and wire payments, $20 for a fast cheque or an international USD transfer, and $0.50 per ACH payment once you exceed your plan’s allowance.
Is Melio free?
The Go plan is free but limited to one user and five free ACH payments a month, with accounting sync stopping after ten payments. Everything beyond that is paid.
Who owns Melio?
Xero. The acquisition was announced in June 2025 and completed on 15 October 2025 for US$2.5 billion upfront plus up to US$0.5 billion in contingent payments. Melio continues to operate as a standalone product.
Does Melio have an API?
API access is listed as a Platinum feature, and Platinum is invite-only with a threshold of more than $300,000 a month in card payments. Melio’s larger API story is its embedded partnerships, where Fiserv, Capital One, Shopify, Clover, Gusto and Xero run Melio inside their own products.
Does Melio work with QuickBooks?
Yes, through a direct two-way sync app for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. But Melio no longer powers QuickBooks Bill Pay, which Intuit took in-house in May 2024.
Verdict
Melio is still the right answer for a small business that wants to stop writing cheques without committing to a real AP platform, and for accounting firms it is close to unbeatable on price. Just budget it honestly: the useful plan is Core or Boost, not Go, and the card and expedited-payment fees are where the money actually goes.
Look elsewhere if you need an ERP beyond QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite, if you are running payroll and expect one tool to do both, or if a payment being frozen for compliance review would break something. If you are weighing it against heavier platforms, the accounts payable automation comparison covers the wider field.